Gilchrist Blue Springs State Park Field Guide

The springs are home to a large diversity of fish species. You will often see mullet swimming around in open water and big schools and sunfish will swim right up to your mask, but many of the fish are relatively cryptic, meaning they tend to hide. If you wait quietly in the shallow water near the edge of the spring, you may be lucky enough to spot some of these unique and harder-to-find fishes in the underwater vegetation and in the dark shadows of the spring.

Caution: foreign invaders! Although we will not see them at Blue Spring in Gilchrist County, there are many springs throughout Florida that now have exotic fish species, which are species not native to the ecosystem. In Florida, some fishes have been accidentally released from aquariums or were originally introduced to control an invasive plant or other fish. If exotic species become established and change how the natural ecosystem works, they are called invasive. Invasive species can harm an ecosystem in many ways, such as by competing with native species for habitat and food and by altering the food web. Here are just 2 examples of many exotic fishes in the springs:

The Santa Fe River (where the Blue Spring run leads to, about 1/4 mile down the boardwalk) is home to 15 species of turtles. More than 25% of all North American freshwater turtle species live in the Santa Fe River basin! In 2013, more than 500 turtles (Suwannee cooters) came into Blue Spring at once and ate most of the hydrilla, an invasive plant that lives in the spring. Suwannee cooters are the most common turtles you will find in Blue Spring, but keep an eye out for the smaller loggerhead musk turtles too!

Did you know that there are left-and right-handed snails? When you look at a snail with the shell opening towards you, you will see that it is either on the left or right of the shell. By looking at the types of macroinvertebrates (large invertebrates, those that you can see without a microscope) present in the water, we can get an idea of what the water quality is like. For example, right-handed snails have gills, so they are sensitive to pollution and need water with a lot of oxygen in order to survive. Left-handed snails do not have gills (they breathe air at the surface), so they can live in water that is more polluted or has lower oxygen levels. So, if there is a high proportion of left-handed snails in a spring or river, it may be in trouble. Besides the few listed here, there are many, many macroinvertebrates that are small in size but hugely important to the ecosystem!

We likely won't see either of these species at Blue Spring, but they are both important parts of springs ecosystems! Other mammals that live around springs are beavers and raccoons. Black bears are also often spotted near many of the springs in the Ocala National Forest (many miles to the south of where we will be at Blue Spring).

The springs are home to a wide variety of plant species. Looking beneath the surface in the springs is like peering into an underwater garden! This is just a small list of the huge diversity of plants that grow in the springs, but it covers all of the species we will see at Blue Spring. Examine each plant closely, because several plants appear to be very similar and are distinguished by only a few minor differences. Also, if you look closely at the plants, you will likely see a lot of fish and snails too - fish like to hide in the waving leaves of the vegetation and snails often graze algae on the blades of grass and leaves of other aquatic plants.

There are many types of algae in the springs, but the 2 most common and noticeable are Lyngbya and Vaucheria. There has been an increase in algae in the springs since the 1990s, and scientists are hard at work studying the algae, the organisms that eat it, and what causes it to grow and outcompete other native vegetation.